Too many! Leonard Cohen at Hanging Rock. Split Enz at Festival Hall. James Brown at the Metro. Archie Roach at Hamer Hall; he was opening for Paul Kelly and when he sang “Took the Children Away” you knew you were witnessing something very special, a real moment.

Melbourne is pretty healthy, you can still see a band playing somewhere any night of the week. We live in inner city Melbourne and we are so lucky, it has a vibrant and varied music scene. In one square block you can see African drumming, jazz, soul, hip-hop, metal, indie, punk, folk, classical….you name it, it’s happening in Melbourne.

Looking back over the last 40 years, the highs have very much outweighed the lows. Our greatest achievement is getting ourselves out of a really low patch when we were in our 30s. When we started our careers we got successful really quickly which lasted for about ten years, but once we started having our kids that’s when we noticed things slowed. We weren’t that creative because we were too tired, bringing up children, the phone wasn’t really ringing, and we very nearly quit. It’s like this big reality check – you have to process that you’ve aged, and you question everything. We got dumped by the record company, we felt like we were finished, not relevant anymore. We were made to feel like we’d aged out. So we got day jobs but never lost our love for singing. After about ten years of this funk we re-emerged as backing singers with Rockwiz which put us on TV for three years and that reminded our audience that we were still there. We started to meet people like our manager Lisa Palermo, our book publisher Martin Hughes and reignite working relationships with friends like Paul Kelly, people who all still believed in us and told us that we had something to offer and even though we had to overcome a lot of self-doubt, this got us out of our rut. Our big lesson here is that the industry can’t take away our talent, singing is the thing that we love doing, after everything all we wanted to keep going. And we did.

Our dad said “don’t listen to knockers”. Our dad always speaks the truth!

Be careful who you associate with, both personally and professionally. Read everything and get a lawyer and a good accountant. Save your money because you might end up in a low period. Write songs. And look further afield, not just in your own backyard.

Bonnie Raitt, won a Grammy 30 years into her career. She’s classy and quietly creative. Dolly Parton because she is everything! Savvy business woman, incredible songwriter, funny, flamboyant, clever, credible musician and she has maintained relevance and respect.

AI is a worry. Creativity and personal connection is lost. It’s too perfect and generic, it’s bland, like a robot. There is no personality, it’s robbing us of our individuality and unique sound.

Social media. Our social media following exploded especially during covid when we were doing the weekly “Sunday Sing Song”, and we’ve found it be a wonderful way to connect and communicate with our fans.

We continue to question how to maintain our career. How do we keep building on it, how do we continue to be creative and relevant. The same question we’ve asked all along but it is more pertinent than ever. And for US to decide when we want to quit, not the industry to decide for us.

We are having a massive year and it’s very exciting! New album, huge tour, Aria Hall of Fame induction.
And a swim or two!

The only time we have ever done karaoke together (and never again!) was in a hotel bar in Hawaii, we
did it there was because no one knew who we were, we were incognito. We chose Elvis Presley’s “I
Can’t Help Falling In Love With You”, a childhood favourite.